The Giants' Dance (13 page)

‘Ouch!' He recoiled from the sharp pain as Gwydion let go, but when he looked down the wound had almost gone. Only two purplish pits remained where the deepest punctures had been.

Suddenly, Will heard the sound of hooves. He wheeled about and made for the door.

‘Come on, Gwydion,' he cried. ‘You told me to take notice of my inner feelings. That's just what I'm doing!'

They headed for the back door and reached the yard at the same time. Two shapes loomed at the end of the yard. The lead horseman drew his mount up sharp and Will felt his right hand grasped in friendship.

‘Tilwin!'

‘Tilwin if you must, though I prefer my own name.'

As Will caught hold of the horse's bridle his eyes fixed on a pale horse that walked through a pool of moonlight. It was Avon, and on his back was Willow.

D
espite his surprise, Will embraced Willow as soon as she got down from the horse. Then his surprise turned to alarm.

‘What's happened?' he asked her, taking his daughter in his arms.

‘As you see, we're as well as we've always been.'

‘I was worried about you—' he turned a questioning eye on Morann, ‘—but I didn't expect you to be brought here.'

‘Well, here we are,' Willow said.

He cuddled the child. ‘She looks well.'

‘She's fine! I was more worried about you.'

He looked to the wizard as he hugged Willow again. Gwydion's silent sternness said much. When they all went inside the inn, Will hissed at Morann, ‘I only asked you to give her my message.'

‘That may be so, but you have a wife who is not so easily put off.'

‘I don't want to sound ungrateful, but—'

Morann was blithely unconcerned. ‘I'm sorry we've arrived so late. It's hard travelling on horseback along a dark road when there's a babe-in-arms to cope with. And our journey was not without peril.'

‘Peril?'

‘Don't
worry.
'

‘What about that important errand in Trinovant you said you were going on?'

‘Things have already gone too far for that – as you shall soon learn.'

Fiddle music met them as they opened the door. There were better than two dozen folk in the Plough. Some were singing, others talking in huddles. One or two turned to look as the new arrivals came by, but Will led them along the passageway and down to the far end, where they squeezed one at a time into the inglenook, and so into the snug. It was only when food and drink had been brought to them, and after Dimmet had left, that Gwydion called down a fresh spell of privacy upon the room and the sounds of merriment faded away.

‘We were almost caught out as we tried to cross the Charrel south of Baneburgh,' Morann said. ‘I spied a column of five hundred men or more.'

‘Five hundred?' Will said in alarm.

‘At the very least. They were marching south and east under the Duke of Mells' banner. From the way they carried themselves I judged them to be farmers only lately raised to arms, but there were veteran horsemen with them, hard men who had been set to chase down any of the column who might decide to stray. I thought it likely these riders would ask unwelcome questions if they spied us, so we went a longer way round.'

‘There's no doubt that war is coming again,' Willow said. ‘If a while ago they were taking men off the land by the dozen, now they're taking them by the score, and even by the hundred.'

‘That's right enough.' Morann nodded. ‘I'd guess the Commissioners will be here in Eiton by the week's end.'

Will took Willow's hand, thinking about the harvesters
who would be swept from the fields like so much chaff. Many of them would never return if the spectre of war was allowed to escape into the world. Willow asked what the wizard foresaw, and Gwydion told her about the battlestones and the significance of what had happened at Little Slaughter. She shook her head in concern at the news that Maskull was once more abroad.

‘Did you find the Dragon Stone?' Will asked.

‘I entered Castle Foderingham and saw that the stone remained entombed there. I enmeshed it in fresh holding spells, and did all that I dared short of attempting to drain it. It now slumbers as deeply as ever it did.'

Will wondered what more there was to the wizard's story. In particular, whether the Duke of Ebor had in the end given his consent.

He leaned across to check on his sleeping daughter. ‘Why did you bring her?'

She searched his face. ‘What else was I going to do?'

‘You could have left her with Breona.'

‘Will, she's our child, and her place is with us.'

‘The work we're about is perilous.' He shook his head at her lack of understanding, still feeling the shock of the lesson that Gwydion had taught him. ‘I don't want her to be put in danger.'

She gave him a hard look that stifled further comment. He glanced at Gwydion anticipating what the wizard would have to say on the matter. He did not have to wait long.

‘Tomorrow our fight against the battlestones must resume in earnest,' Gwydion said. ‘Willow, you must stay here tonight, of course. But at first light tomorrow you should set off for home.'

‘As you can see, Master Gwydion,' Willow said, unmoved by the wizard's persuasion, ‘I'm well, and Bethe is well also. Far better than either of us would have been if a shooting star had landed flat on our village like it did on Little Slaughter.'

The wizard glanced at Morann with displeasure. ‘Be that as it may—'

‘So the Vale is no safer for us than anywhere else, I'd say.'

Will jumped in. ‘Gwydion's right. It's more dangerous for you to be here.'

‘Well, maybe there's another thing that you should know,' she said stubbornly. ‘You can thank Master Gwydion for his advice. But I'd say it's my duty to go with my man and help him in whatever business he's upon. That's what I undertook to do at our handfasting, and that's what I'm going to do. And as for Bethe, babies are a lot tougher than folk generally give them credit for. She'll want for nothing on the road.'

At that there was silence. Then Gwydion laid both hands flat on the table. ‘It is right and proper that we have all been able to say our say tonight, but it is getting late now. Let us go to our beds and settle the matter tomorrow.'

When they emerged from the snug the dancing and music and eating and drinking were all finished. The inn's big room was quiet and half in darkness. Will took Willow and Bethe upstairs and saw they were comfortable, then he went out through the darkened yard, down the lane, over a stile and into a grassy field in which an old oak grew. Overhead the stars of late summer twinkled. He asked them to tell him what to do for the best, but they only gazed down in pitiless silence.

The stars don't know what to do, he told himself sternly. They're just holes in the sky, holes seventeen hundred leagues away. You'll have to answer questions like that yourself, Willand, as hard as they are.

Whatever happened tomorrow, it was going to be an eventful day. It would be wise to meet it fully prepared. He did not know why, but he took the red fish from around his neck and put it back into his pouch. Then he found a place that felt right, stood straight, his feet a little apart and
his arms loose at his sides. When he felt the time had come to begin, he closed his eyes and breathed three deep draughts of air, drawing them in through his nose and blowing them out each time from his mouth. Then he planted his feet hard in the good earth and invited the power to fill him.

First it trembled in the soles of his feet, an irresistible force rising through his legs, then up through his body. He felt the tingling rush over his ribs and all the way up his spine. It surrounded his heart, and there split into three streams. Slowly, he raised his arms until they were as far apart as they would go. The power kept rising inside him until it reached his hands and it seemed to Will that a pale blue light that only he could see had begun shooting out from the tips of his splayed fingers. But it was when the power reached his head that he was hit by an overwhelming feeling of joy and peace.

He felt he was inside a great cold flame, and even though his eyes were closed he could sense a brilliant light filling him. As he accepted it, it grew brighter and stronger, blotting out everything, so that in that ultimate timeless moment he forgot who and what he was.

But then, gradually, the light began to draw back inside him. He did not mind that it was dimming for he knew that, although he could no longer see it, the power had not forsaken him. It was wonderful how that moment seemed to last forever and yet to take no longer than a brief moment. Wholly refreshed in spirit, he went back inside, feeling content and happy to be with his family despite everything.

Will did not know what woke him. At first he thought it was Bethe's crying, but as he lay still in the darkness the echoes died in his mind and he heard only Willow's breathing and what he thought must be the furtive rustling of mice in the thatch.

But then, as he came fully awake, he felt pins and needles tingling in the nape of his neck, and he sat up when a scratching and scrabbling came at the shutters.

That's no mouse, he thought. It's far too big. Someone's trying to get in!

He was about to shout out, but he stopped himself. A shout would wake everyone, but it would also drive away whoever was outside.

Silently, he pulled his clothes on, wrapped himself in his cloak to cover his shirt's whiteness, and crept along the passageway. He moved carefully down the stair, pausing only to take up the balk of wood that barred the door, and went out into the slanting moonlight. No sooner had he stepped outside, than he heard a scream. It was Willow. Then Bethe began to cry.

‘Hoy!' he shouted as he reached the place below the window. There, up on the thatch and scraping at the shutter, was a goggly.

So they
are
child-stealers after all, Will thought. It's after Bethe! But it hasn't reckoned on the spells of protection that Gwydion's put on the Plough! That must have been what woke me up.

‘You! Get away from there!'

The thing was fighting to open the shutters, and now it was hissing and scratching like a mad thing, then it slid down a little among the hard moonlight shadows and began to tear at the thatch.

Will flung the balk of wood at it, but missed. Then he picked up a piece of broken floor tile. It was sharp and three-cornered and he aimed it well. The creature twisted away, but this time it was hit on the back. It screwed up its face at him and shrieked, before flapping up into the air.

As soon as it settled again, the shutter was flung open. That knocked the creature away, but it was the last thing
Will saw of it, for, without warning, a dark shape loomed out of the shadows and slammed heavily into him. The weight of it knocked him down and forced the breath out of his lungs. He was pinned down as a muscular body landed on top of him. A rough rope was neatly looped around his neck and pulled tight. The attacker was trying to choke him, but the rope snagged on Will's wrist and dragged his hand across his throat. It prevented him from using his arm, but it saved him, because as the rope was drawn tighter his hand was pulled up inside the loop. The attacker pulled harder, but he soon saw that no matter how tight the rope was pulled it would not do what he wanted, and so he let go.

Instead he tried to beat Will unconscious. Blow after blow rained on his head, but Will fended them off. He matched the attacker punch for punch, and eventually managed to thrust him back and get on top of him.

But no sooner was he up than a new threat came at him from above.

‘Naaw! Naaaw!'

The creature flapped and squealed in the darkness, diving and jerking and raking his head with its claws. Will threw up his arm and swatted it away, but that unbalanced him and he lost his grip on his attacker's arm.

As he fought it became plain to him that the man who was trying to kill him was exactly as strong and skilled as himself. He had determination too, and seeing that gave Will a vital strength of his own. He fought back, countering every move with one of his own. They rolled over and over, gripped in deadlock. He grunted and snorted, felt a hand close on his windpipe; another knocked his head back hard against the ground. By bucking upward and twisting, he threw his attacker off. Then shouts came.

As Will grappled, he drew his arm back and a shaft of moonlight fell across the other's face. He gasped, and recoiled from it.

By now, lantern beams were piercing the gloom. Patches of light swam drunkenly. Heels scraped against cobblestones and a dark figure fled. Bolt growled and there was the tearing of cloth, then a yelp. Will struggled to his feet to find Willow rushing out with his oak staff in her hand. She swung and hit something hard. Then the mastiff leapt at the stranger again, but the man was already scrambling away into the night.

Duffred ran out of the yard with a fire-iron in his hand, shouting, ‘Bolt! Bolt!'

Then Dimmet was holding the lantern up in Will's face and saying, ‘Is he all right?'

In the aftermath, Will could make little sense of what had happened.

‘Who was he?' Willow asked, cuddling Bethe close to her now.

Morann strode about the yard. ‘I wish you'd hung on to him a moment longer.'

‘I'm sorry I didn't,' Will said, rubbing his jaw.

Dimmet growled. ‘But you're all right, and that's the main thing.'

‘Whoever he was, he was strong,' Will said, picking up the door bar and taking it inside. ‘It was all I could do to hold him off. There was one of the flying creatures helping him.'

‘A goggly?' Dimmet said. ‘I told you they was wicked vermin!'

They all followed Will indoors. Willow sat him down and began to dab at his hurts with a dampened rag.

‘I'm all right,' he said. ‘A few cuts and bruises and –
ouch!
– a twisted finger.'

‘Looks like he's tried to throttle you,' Morann said, looking at the rope burn on Will's neck. He stared watchfully into the darkness and started as he saw movement.

It was only Duffred and the dog. Duffred was breathless and empty-handed. ‘Got away. I called Bolt off. Didn't want him hurt on no thief's account.'

‘What happened, Will?' Dimmet asked. ‘What do you think he was after in my yard?'

‘He was after me.' Will touched a tender spot on his head, still shocked by what had happened. ‘Just when I thought I'd got the better of him, the strangest thing happened. I saw his face clear as day in the moonlight.'

‘And?' Willow asked.

‘It terrified me.' He shook his head. ‘He had no face. I just…let go of him.'